Preparation for "the Day"...

[Dave Monroe]

On Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 5:54 AM, Guy Ian Scott Pursey
<g.i.s.pursey at reading.ac.uk> wrote:

> Vineland is my favourite Pynchon novel - I've read it three times.
>
> But mathematics...? Erm.... where do I start? (Off to look for some
> introductory books on mathematical concepts...)

I'd suggest, if you can't travel physically back in time yourself,
send a tachyonic message somehow to yr younger self ca. the first day
of school and let him know, yes you WILL need this someday, if only in
order to read really big books, but ...

Meanwhile, no doubt due to the eternal vigilance of a buncha guys with
penholders firmly in front shirt pocket, it's been noted that the
Wikipedia is generally realible on subjects matematical, at the very
least.  However, i've often found myself hyperlinking here from ...

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/

But here, I'd say, do see as well, in particular, e.g., ...

The Fourth Dimension

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/F/fourth_dimension.html

Banchoff, Thomas F.  "From Flatland to Hypergraphics:
   Interacting with Higher Dimensions."  Interdisciplinary Science Reviews,
   Vol. 15, No. 4 (1990) 364-372.

http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/ISR/ISR.html

Abbott, E.A.  Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884)

http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/eaa/FL.HTM
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/201
http://www.der.org/films/flatland.html
http://xahlee.org/flatland/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland

All those sites have their particular strengths/charms, by the way.

But above all, my most favorite coffee table book ever:

Henderson, Linda Dalrymple.  The Fourth Dimension
   and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art.
   Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1983.

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0704&msg=117253
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0107&msg=57599

Unfortunately, a lot of the links there are now dead, but do see as well ...

__________.  "Italian Futurism and 'The Fourth Dimension.'"
   Art Journal, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Winter, 1981): 317-323.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/776440

Pacchioli, David.  "Deflating Hyperspace."
   Research/Penn State, Vol. 16, no. 4 (December, 1995)

http://www.rps.psu.edu/dec95/hyper.html
http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0703&msg=116870

Rucker, Rudy.  The Fourth Dimension:
    A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes.
    Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

http://books.google.com/books?id=8J0djs-FK_8C

Rucker's Spaceland was also recommended ...

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0704&msg=117262

Also, this might prove suggestive:

Vargish, Thomas and Delo E. Mook.
   Inside Modernism: Relativity Theory, Cubism, Narrative.
   New Haven, CN: Yale UP, 1997.

And while I'm at it ...

Randall, Lisa.  Warped Passages:
   Unravling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions.
   New York: Ecco, 2005.

http://www.warpedpassages.com/